Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  “You will?”

  “Yes,” he assured. He led me out of the conference room and we stopped just outside the door. I threw a quick glance at Mark, who was standing very still at his post, eyes lowered to the ground—Dana had not returned his glasses.

  “Down that hall,” Clark pointed, as we stopped at a juncture, “is just more conference rooms, so we’ll head back this way and I’ll show you the other offices before we head into the lab.”

  Mark fell into step behind both of us as we walked to the other hallway I had not explored. There were three open corridors on the right side of the hall, one at the beginning, one at the middle and one at the very end.

  Clark led me, pointing to the occupied offices on the left wall, telling me about the people in each office.

  We turned into the arch at the end of the hallway, Clark pointing out more offices and people that I would need to know. But as we neared the end, a large door with a sign that read “Library of the Commission of the People” stood alone.

  “A library?” I asked, pointing at the door.

  “The last two doors here are the doors to the library,” Clark confirmed. He opened the door, revealing the towering bookshelves illuminated by bright lights in the cavernous room. While the library was not the biggest one I had seen, it was one of the most beautiful. The tall shelves were made of dark wood and each aisle had an old-style rolling ladder. There were large second, third, and fourth levels comprised of balconies with beautifully ornate banisters and sweeping spiral staircases.

  “What’s in here?”

  “All kinds of things,” Clark answered, looking around the books, his eyebrows high. “Documents and books of the Second Revolution, pre-Secondary Revolution things…several things that they have not allowed in the Central Library.”

  “So, on top of taking in people who were dangerous to the security of America, the books were confiscated, too?”

  “Sometimes, the books were more dangerous than the people,” Clark told me seriously. “I’ve always wanted to go through all these and see what is in here, but I don’t even know where to start.”

  “There’s so many…”

  “Come on.” Clark jerked his head out the door, where Mark was waiting. The three of us walked to the end of the hallway, turning right and walking to another door that read “Commission of the People – Records.” My heart skipped a beat.

  “This is the Records room,” Clark noted, his voice strained. I stared at him for a long moment as he nodded. “As you can see, this room is completely secure. Card, fingerprint, and retina scans. There is a camera at every angle pointed at this door.” He motioned around the hallway and I looked up, trying to spot the hidden cameras. “No blind spots. No way to get in without the proper clearance.”

  Clark turned away and was about to say something when the next door on the left, across from the middle corridor, opened and two familiar people stepped out.

  “You really have been treading a fine line, lately,” Dana said dangerously as he stepped out after the other person.

  “You don’t need to know everything,” Sean groaned, rolling his eyes as he turned to face the leader of the Commission. “Let me handle some things on my own. If you’re always looming over me, I can’t do my job properly.”

  “Why? Do I frighten you?” Dana smiled coldly. Sean barked a laugh.

  “No, I just get sick of putting up with your bitching when you see the way I handle things,” Sean quipped. I was surprised to hear the talk between the two, since I always thought Sean would never talk back to Dana. “I hate putting up with you all the time. Why don’t you find someone else to bother and let me do my job?”

  Dana laughed and placed a hand against the side of Sean’s face—a hand, I noticed, Sean did not flinch away from.

  “I love it when you get bossy…” he praised, his voice dripping with honey. I shivered. I wanted to understand what it was about Dana that made him so powerful, so easily adaptable to what everyone wanted to the point where he could convince and seduce anyone to do what he wanted.

  Dana dropped his hand and sighed heavily.

  “This is not me monitoring you as your boss, this is me monitoring you to see if I can trust you, and if I can’t trust you, you will be replaced,” Dana said as if it was a mere inconvenience.

  “Okay,” Sean said, a smile on his face, “but good luck finding someone who will put up with your shit. I’m going to be hard to replace.”

  “Very true,” Dana agreed. “It will be difficult…but don’t think it’s not possible,” he warned with a dangerous smile and a mischievous glint in his eyes.

  I was unsure what to think of Sean’s reaction to the conversation that implied he could be tested on or killed. He did not seem at all fazed.

  “You need to trust me a little more. I have been here for seven years. Name the last employee who was not an experiment to stay with you that long,” Sean challenged with a raised eyebrow.

  “You know I can’t,” Dana chuckled. “Why don’t you come to my office around midnight and we can discuss this further?” he breathed, stepping forward and running his hand along the lapel of Sean’s suit. I blinked, surprised to see Dana openly flirt with another man.

  Sean just laughed and grabbed Dana’s wrist, pushing it away.

  “Don’t you have work to do?” he scolded. “You have a meeting in five minutes. You might want to clean your office.”

  “Sean!” Dana whined as the taller man walked toward us. “Why don’t you ever play with me anymore?”

  “I’ll play with you when you stop being such a spoiled brat,” Sean laughed over his shoulder. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  Dana grinned, his eyes falling on me. He winked once before slipping into his office, closing the door.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Sean rolled his eyes as he approached us.

  “Sean…” I started slowly. “Dana just said he would replace you. You could become an experiment.”

  “He didn’t mean it.” Sean shook his head, glancing at the closed door. “It’s taken me over three years, but I know how to read him pretty well. I can tell when he is serious and when he’s just playing. He really enjoys making people squirm. He’s just in one of his moods today.”

  “And still you talk to him like that?” I gasped. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Dana and I have a very strange relationship. He threatens to make me into an experiment at least every other day. He started doing it about two years ago. As you can see, I’m still here. He likes keeping people around who don’t put up with his shit. He finds it refreshing.”

  Sean reached into his suit pocket, pulling out a pair of sunglasses as he turned to Mark.

  “Mark,” he called, handing the sunglasses to the former experiment. The silent man stepped forward, accepting the glasses with both hands and a small bow as Sean placed a comforting hand on Mark’s shoulder. The head of security then glanced at Clark and me.

  “Have you had your tracers put in, yet?”

  “No…” I murmured, my stomach churning again.

  “Just so you know,” he whispered to me, “Dana does not have access to the tracers. Only I do.” I stepped backward, not sure if I should feel frightened or relieved. “He will only be able to trace you if I am with him. That’s what the argument was about. He no longer has access to that clearance level.”

  I blinked at Sean stupidly, trying to think of what to say as he stood straight.

  “…thank you…” I whispered sincerely.

  “I’ll leave you alone now,” he said. “Lily, if you ever need me, my office is right here on the corner,” he pointed at the left corner office in the middle hall.

  “Thank you,” I said again. He nodded and said goodbye to Clark before walking to his office and disappearing inside.

  “Wow…” I breathed. “He’s a lot braver than I thought.”

  “He’s probably the only one who can talk to Dana like that,” Clark
agreed.

  “They aren’t…like…” I looked at Clark expectantly.

  “No idea,” he admitted. “I’ve seen Dana flirt with him a lot, but I’ve never seen it go beyond that, so who knows?” Clark pointed at Dana’s office door. “I shouldn’t need to tell you…” he said, raising his eyebrows as he motioned to the nameplate.

  We then turned down the middle hall and Clark pointed to the offices, including his mother’s, the offices of Dana’s other two advisors, and others who were key in Dana’s political detail. Once we reached the end of that hall and we were at the first hallway again, Clark took a deep breath, his step slowing.

  “Are you ready to go back into the lab?”

  Clark led me to the door at the end of the hallway of Dana’s office, bringing memories back of the last time I had been through that door.

  Clark stepped aside and let Mark pass, who used his card and fingerprint scans to open the door. A part of me was really confused why Mark would have clearance into the labs of the Commission as a former experiment himself, but I did not think to ask, since we were immediately stopped by the security desk past the whirring lights.

  “Clark,” one of the men greeted, shocked. “And Lily, the new girl…” He looked confused for a moment and then his eyes widened in realization. “Oh, right, tracers.”

  He reached out to Mark, who pulled out the pouch from his jacket pocket, handing it over. I was really surprised at how Mark seemed to understand quite a lot for knowing limited English. When I looked at Clark, asking him with my eyes, he nodded.

  “Mark was here when I got my tracers put in,” he explained. “He knows what to do.”

  “Alright, you’re not entirely in the system, yet…” the man at the desk mused, grabbing something behind the counter. “Hey, Jason, help me, will ya?” he said to the man behind him.

  “What’d you need?”

  “Scan Mark.”

  “Aw, man, really?” Jason groaned. “I hate doing these freaky fuckers…” I watched Jason grumble as he grabbed something and walk over to Mark. “You,” he snapped sharply, pointing at Mark’s feet, “shoe off.”

  The man behind the desk caught my attention again.

  “If you could place your right hand against this screen,” he nodded to the flat screen he had placed on the counter. I obeyed, the screen scanning my palm and beeping as the guard typed into his computer. I turned again to watch Jason and Mark. Mark placed his right sock in his shoe, leaving his foot bare.

  “Do you think he’s clean?” Jason grumbled. “I never know with these freaks. Clark,” he called, “can he do anything on his own? Do you have to bathe him, or can he do it himself?”

  “Damn, what is with you people?” Clark groaned. “He’s not an invalid. He can bathe and dress himself. He’s perfectly capable.”

  “My, someone is protective,” Jason teased coldly before smacking the side of Mark’s right leg. “Foot,” he ordered.

  “What are they doing?” I whispered to Clark.

  “All experiments have a microchip in their right foot and a tattoo with their experiment number. They scan it to be sure no one tries to sneak in under disguise,” Clark explained. “I’ll show you,” he said in response to my puzzled expression.

  Jason was mumbling crude things under his breath as he held a screen to the bottom of Mark’s foot. I cringed at the words.

  The man behind the desk was about to tell me something, but Jason sighed heavily and pushed Mark’s foot away, standing straight.

  “There, the fucker’s been scanned,” he groaned, annoyed.

  “Quit bitching,” the other man laughed. “We have to check them, since all the damn slant-eyes look the same.”

  “Their eyes are dead, I swear, like there’s no soul in them,” Jason grumbled as he returned to his position behind the desk.

  “Of course they don’t have a soul,” the first one barked a laugh.

  “Just in case you have forgotten, he can snap your neck before you even blink,” Clark snarled. “So why don’t you shut up and do your job rather than bully him?”

  I was shocked at Clark’s actions defending Mark. I was angered and annoyed as well, but I felt uncomfortable speaking out against the harsh words.

  “Back up, kid,” Jason growled. “You keep your freaky fucker in line. That’s the only job you need to be worried about, got it?” The man behind the desk shook his head, lifting a device in front of my face and telling me to look into the circle.

  When my retina scan was finished and the man turned to his computer again, Clark tapped me on the shoulder, walking to Mark.

  “Turn around,” he told the experiment, motioning with his hand. Confused, Mark stood still until Clark placed hand on his shoulder and turned Mark’s back to me. Clark tapped the side of Mark’s right calf, causing the experiment to lift his foot again. I saw the surprisingly large tattoo on Mark’s instep that read “80029.”

  “The chip is under the tattoo,” Clark explained, releasing Mark’s ankle and nodding, silently telling him to put his shoe back on.

  “Alright,” the man behind the desk sighed, replacing the three chips in the bag. “We’ll let you in. Go straight back until you reach the last door of Ward Six,” he instructed. “Go to the hallway on the left and that will take you to Lab One. Clark should know where to go.”

  When Mark had put his shoe back on, he took the bag with the tracers again. I was so nervous, I was practically shaking as we entered the Enterprise labs.

  Mark placed his hand against a black pad to open the first door, bringing us into the hall with floor-to-ceiling glass doors to the cells.

  “These are the termination cells,” Clark explained, his voice echoing. There were only two cells occupied. One housed a girl about my age, who was curled in the back corner, covering her head as she shivered. Clark placed a hand on my back to keep me moving.

  “Maybe it’s best if you don’t look…”

  “I want to…” I wanted to see them, but not as experiments. I wanted to understand who they had been before Dana got his hands on them. I needed to know who they were as people. Seeing someone my age in a cell that ultimately led to execution made my heart rip into pieces.

  The other occupied cell held someone I could not discern, since he was curled up in the back corner, his back facing the glass. I continued through the short hallway with Clark, Mark trailing behind us.

  With the use of Mark’s fingerprints we moved into Ward Three. Not as overwhelmed as I had been my first visit, I was able to fully study my surroundings. Before entering the doors marked with a large “3” we stepped across a hallway extending both directions, leading to doors marked “1” and “2.”

  “Those are Wards One and Two,” Clark nodded to each door. “To get any further into the labs, you have to go through Ward Three and Ward Six. Wards One and Two both dead end.”

  I looked around the bright hall of Ward Three as we walked, vaguely remembering my first tour. I noted the smaller hallways branching from the main one that lead to more cells, but I was unable to explore the ward completely, Clark leading me insistently through the main row of glass doors. One of the experiments ran up to the glass, banging her fist against it angrily as we passed. I jumped, startled by the appearance of the young woman with a shaved head and a metal muzzle around her mouth.

  “It’s alright,” Clark said. “That glass is strong enough to withstand even the strongest experiments. She can’t reach you.”

  “What can…I mean…what kind of…” I did not know how to phrase my question.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know most of the experiments. But we are in Ward Three, so she’s not as powerful as the ones further back.”

  “What ward did Mark come from?” I asked as we reached the door out of the ward.

  “Eight,” Clark answered. “Originally, Mykail was in Ward Seven, if I remember correctly.”

  “I know,” I said. I hesitated, remembering Mark, but he seemed not to u
nderstand our conversation. The experiment led us into another hallway mirroring the first, with the door in front of us pained with a “6” while the two on either end of the hall were marked with a “4” and “5.”

  “Wards Four and Five are the other two gift wards. They also dead-end, just like Wards One and Two. Ward Six is the first of the weapons, so they might be a little more aggressive. Just keep walking. The lab is just past this ward.”

  Several of the twelve cells on the main hall of Ward Six were empty. I could not help but hesitate outside the cells of a young black girl, who was sitting in the middle of the cell, staring at us. She looked to be only five or six years old, and while a part of me was sickened at seeing such a young girl there, I was also frightened, realizing that she was a weapon. I could see the danger in having a powerful weapon concealed behind such a young, innocent exterior.

  When we reached the end of the ward, Mark opened the door once more and led us into a larger hallway with two corridors open on either side. Mark turned to look at Clark, who pointed to the right. Mark led us down the appointed hallway.

  “These are the labs,” Clark explained. “You went into the other one before.”

  As we entered the corridor, the door at the end of the hall that read “Lab 1” opened and a man in a suit similar to Mark’s stepped out. He was also Asian, but looked younger with softer, thinner face. As he passed us, he and Mark looked at one another, speaking silently for the briefest moment, before the other man walked away. Mark turned his head over his shoulder to watch him leave, before opening the lab door for us.

  I hesitated before stepping in, Clark following me.

  The lab was bright, much brighter than the lab I remembered from my first night in the Commission. Every table was empty and the curtains were drawn back, making the room look larger. There was only one man in the lab, looking at a tablet, but he looked up when the door closed behind us.

  “Hello,” he greeted. “You must be Lily Sandover,” He clicked his tablet off with a smile and motioned us closer.

  I walked forward on legs made of jelly, noting the locations of the sharp instruments lying around the room. I had always been afraid of needles, so being in that room was nerve-wracking enough, let alone the thought of having the tracers put under my skin by, what I assumed would be, large needles.